Amazon To Split HQ2 Between New York, Virginia With 50,000 Total Jobs

Amazon ended more than a year of speculation on Tuesday when the company officially revealed two cities that will serve as its East Coast home: New York City and Arlington, Va.

The Internet giant last week was reportedly busy finalizing plans to move into the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens, as well as the Crystal City area of Arlington, Va., near Washington, D.C. Amazon made the formal announcement confirming the two new locations, National Landing in Arlington and Long Island City neighborhood of Queens, in a blog post Tuesday morning.

Seattle-based Amazon added that it has also selected Nashville for a new Center of Excellence for its Operations business, which is responsible for the company’s customer fulfillment, transportation, and supply chain activities.

[Related: AWS CEO Jassy Taunts Oracle’s Ellison After Amazon Turns Off Oracle Data Warehouse]

“These two locations will allow us to attract world-class talent that will help us to continue inventing for customers for years to come. The team did a great job selecting these sites, and we look forward to becoming an even bigger part of these communities," Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder and CEO said of the two cities in the blog post.

Amazon pledged that it will be investing $5 billion across both new headquarter locations in an effort to create more than 50,000 full-time jobs with more than 25,000 employees each in New York City and Arlington. Additionally, the Operations Center of Excellence in Nashville will create more than 5,000 new jobs, Amazon said.

Amazon said it will receive $1.525 billion in incentives for the New York project and $573 million in incentives for the Virginia project. It also said it will receive up to $102 million in incentives for the Nashville center.

According to the company, the two locations were picked because of good public transit systems and close proximity to major airports. Long Island City, for example, has strong transit access to 8 subway lines, 13 bus lines, commuter rail, a bike-sharing service, and ferries serving the area, as well as LaGuardia and JFK airports, Amazon said.

“With an average salary of $150,000 per year for the tens of thousands of new jobs Amazon is creating in Queens, economic opportunity and investment will flourish for the entire region," said New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo.

National Landing, on the other hand, is located less than 3 miles from downtown Washington, D.C. and has access to three Metro stations, commuter rail access, and Reagan National Airport, Amazon said.

“This is a big win for Virginia – I’m proud Amazon recognizes the tremendous assets the Commonwealth has to offer and plans to deepen its roots here,” said Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam in a statement.

Amazon said it will begin hiring at both new headquarters, as well as in Nashville, in 2019.

One of Amazon's largest annual events, Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent, a learning conference, is scheduled for later this month. AWS on Monday announced that it has officially opened its second set of GovCloud datacenters in the U.S., an East Coast region that can serve federal, state, and local government agencies, as well as IT contractors that service these customers.